No Ongoing Talks Between Dunn, Nationals

MONDAY, 10:00am: ESPN.com's Buster Olney hears (via Twitter) that there are no ongoing talks between Dunn and the Nationals.

SUNDAY, 10:19pm: Dunn would prefer to hammer out a contract extension soon so that he doesn't have to hear his name in trade rumors, according to Bill Ladson of MLB.com.

3:45pm: Despite not working something out prior to Opening Day, Adam Dunn is still open to negotiating an extension with Washington during the season, writes Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post. Dunn is also comfortable waiting until after the season, but made it clear he'd like to stay with the Nats:

"If it gets done in two weeks, if it gets done in a month, great," Dunn said. "If it doesn't, then like I said, we've got all offsesason. This is the place I want to be at. I want to be here. This team is obviously going in the right direction. I'm all for it."

Dunn is entering the second year of a two-year, $20MM deal he signed with Washington prior to the 2009 season. While Dunn failed to reach the 40 home run mark for the first time in five seasons, he still enjoyed perhaps his best season at the plate. The Big Donkey hit .267/.398/.529 and belted 38 homers in 159 games during his age-29 season.

There's never been any doubt about Dunn's bat; Fangraphs ranked his offense alongside the likes of Ryan Howard, Pablo Sandoval, and Alex Rodriguez. However, his woes with the glove will always limit his overall value in the National League, and that trend continued in Washington. UZR/150 pegged Dunn's time in the outfield at a brutal -39.5 mark, and while he improved at first base, the -25.0 mark he posted there is hardly impressive.

Still, the Nationals love Dunn's offensive thunder and don't seem to be deterred by his struggles on defense. Kilgore quotes general manager Mike Rizzo as saying the two sides are in communication, though Rizzo declined to comment further.

Dunn says that he prefers to stay out of negotiations, and is letting his agent, Greg Genske, handle all of the discussions until things get serious. Dunn remains firm on one issue — staying in Washington:

"There's a lot of things to be excited about. I feel comfortable here. I feel like I fit in really well here. My family loves it here. It seems like it's a great fit. When we do something special here, I want to be a part of it."

Not that far out? The team won 59 games last year. They needed to win 92 to make the wild card. Please explain how they are going to close a 30+ game gap? Strasburg could be Babe Ruth (hitter + pitcher) and the team wouldn’t sniff at the playoffs. The Nats are just bad. Now, maybe in 3 or 4 years if everything breaks right – then sure. But for now, and for the duration of Dunn’s contract – they don’t have a shot.

There is such a huge difference between the two. Adam Dunn really is a DH if he isn’t on the Nationals whereas Carlos Pena is one of the best defensive First Baseman in Baseball and he will hit 40+ Home Runs every season.

Okay, I’m pretty sure read “the best” you better not have edited it. But whatever, you dont really appear to have a grip on things if you think Dunn on the Nats is going to help them win more games. His presence on the team only adds 1.3 more wins than a replacement player. There’s hundreds of better options out there.

Listen, watch the Nationals play. You don’t need to believe every stat out there. Watching the Game of Baseball is so much better than reading Fangraphs WAR projections. You understand so much more. What’s next? Corky Miller can out hit Albert Pujols?

Remember, Those guys get the projections wrong so many of the times. Just watch the Nationals, look at the way they pitch, There are times where Adam Dunn has nothing to do with their struggles. I guarantee if they get rid of Adam Dunn they lose 20 more games than they would with him.

And the Nats without Dunn would’ve definitely won more than 39 games last year. No player in baseball will cause a swing in 20 wins one way or the other. The Yankees could start my grandmother at shortstop and still be looking at 85-90 wins.

“Listen, watch the Nationals play. You don’t need to believe every stat out there. Watching the Game of Baseball is so much better than reading Fangraphs WAR projections. You understand so much more. What’s next? Corky Miller can out hit Albert Pujols?”

Look watching baseball is awesome, theres no denying in that. However, sometimes your eyes deceive you.
For example your watching a Royals game and then all of a sudden you see Yuniesky Betancourt make an awesome play. Your probably going to think, “Gee, hes an awesome defensive shortstop.” But then, his -23.9 UZR will disagree. Same with Jason Bay (he didnt have any errors!), Ellsbury (walking highlight reel!), etc.

Agreed…if you watch the royals play when the real big Z(sorry zambrano but its true) but if you watch those games when greinke goes 8 and gives it off to soria, you might say “wow the royals are a really good team, they might even be the best in the game” but then you watch the other 132 games and realize that the reason we look at stats is because of exactly that…baseball is a game of numbers

Why use projections. The ACTUAL RESULTS have demonstrated that Dunn is not a huge difference maker. He’s a 2-3 Win player as a DH. Sub 2 WAR player when he’s manning 1st or LF. That’s not good. It doesn’t help the Nats. He should absolutely be traded to a team (like Seattle). If they can get someone to pick up the entire tab ($12m) they should be ecstatic.

As mentioned above. The Nats won 59 games. Are you seriously suggesting that without Dunn this is a 39 win team? Especially, on the back of your earlier comment about the Nats not being “that far out” when talking about the playoffs?

A 20 game difference maker?
Interestingly, not once did the Reds have a winning season with Adam Dunn on the team. From 2001-2008: losing teams, every single one of them. In his last (partial) season with the Reds, they won 74. The next year, without the Big Donkey, they won 78. A coincidence? Probably not entirely. Any NL team that signs him is simply wasting a spot on the roster.

NOT AT ALL. Dunn has not business being on the diamond, he needs to be a DH. If they lock Dunn up then it will be the perect mix of player ego and GM not knowing baseball. Dunns ego is too big for him to play DH and The nats gm honestly thinks 38 hrs 120+ K’s and a sub .270 avg makes dunn a good baseball player. Yes the Nats are moving in the right direction but the smartest move for them is to either trade dunn and get some good prospect or two in return or let him walk and get draft picks.

Because if they trade Dunn, they have no offense. And I don’t know how much value they can get from a DH or a first baseman who can’t play defense. They aren’t going to get any top prospect in my opinion.

They have Zimmerman & Willingham, and thats more than the A’s have, who are trying out an all-defense+speed+pitching no power team this year (think 85 Cards). Dunn hurts the Nats too much. With defense that bad, he makes the pitchers numbers look worse than they are. Team’s need to play to their strengths and the Nats have an excellent defensive team other than Dunn and play in a pitcher-friendly park, so why would they try and strengthen their home game instead of trying to cover all the bases and have an AL-only player in there?

If the Nats truly are moving in the right direction they will let Dunn walk to an AL team where his glove wont make him a near worthless player and instead he will be seen as a Travis Hafner in his prime-type.

Dunn Ranked 54th out of 62 qualified OFers in terms of WAR (Wins Above Replacement player). His bat scored an amazing 35.5, yet his glove was -36.3, perhaps one of the worst ratings of all time. This gave him a WAR of 1.3. To see what WAR would have been had he played DH say 95% of the time and LF the other 5%, Sin Shoo Choo would be a decent comparison. Choo scored a 36.0 with the bat and a -0.9 with the glove, giving him a total WAR of 5.0. If youre the owner of the Nats, you let Dunn walk because…

HE ADDS 4 EXTRA WINS PLAYING AS A DH NOT AS A LEFT FIELDER. HE IS MEDIOCRE IN THE NL, AND A BEAST IN THE AL.

He doesn’t really add 4 wins DH’ing. It’s more like two. The replacement level at DH is a league average hitter so if he had DH’ed last year he would have been a 3.6 WAR player. Which is still very valuable.

Most DH’s hit 30-35 HRs? In what universe? Adam Dunn was the 19th most valuable offensive player in baseball last season, at 35.5 runs above average, and only eight AL players ranked ahead of him. Of those eight, only one was a DH-type, in Adam Lind.

Of those, only five even hit 25 HRs (Kubel, Lind, Matsui, Scott, Ortiz). Only Lind hit 30. Dunn might not post a helpful batting average, but he’d have led the entire DH class in both OBP and HR and trailed Lind by just 5 points in OPS.

I wouldn’t say that Dunn is a league average DH and if you read my post you will see that I didn’t. I said that replacement level at DH is a league average hitter i.e. someone like Jake Fox. As PL said, last year Dunn was 35.5 runs above average offensively. So If your team had Jake Fox in the lineup and you replaced him with Adam Dunn your team would score 35.5 runs more.

Disagree. Jason Bay played the field the entire season and his defense was worth -13 runs while his offense was just two runs behind Dunn (33.7)… Bay was still a 3.5 WAR player, or about 2 runs better than Dunn.

To raise his value by two wins, Dunn would merely need to improve from the worst corner OF in baseball to simply a bad corner OF. Eliminating his defense altogether would indeed raise his overall value by in the neighborhood of 4 wins (probably more like 3 and change).

Hideki Matsui was a 2.7 WAR player without playing an inning in the field in 2009, and his offense was at 22.1 RAR while Dunn was 35.5.

Yes but Dunn has been trying to improve his defense for years and it’s NOT gonna happen. Nat’s could grab some decent close to the majors talent if they trade him at the deadline. I’m sure the Angels will be looking when one of their OF/DH tandem goes down.

The Jason Bay comparison is interesting because he is bad enough in the field that he is pretty much equally valuable in left field or at DH. All things considered he was 1.7 runs more valuable in left field than he would have been DH’ing. That said he’s bat was about equally valuable to Dunn’s (36 v. 35.9 wRAA). I think you have pretty much nailed how Dunn’s value as a DH. It’s virtually the same as Bay’s.

You can’t simply eliminate his defense all together all the while comparing him to players who are playing in the field. If you want to eliminate his defense and have him DH that’s fine. I would prefer that too. But then you will have to compare him to the offense you would expect from another DH.

About the Matsui comment: I am by no means an expert on WAR but I believe that the replacement level is scaled to 150 games. Because Matsui put up 22.1 batting runs in less than 150 games he is slightly more valuable because the Yankees could have someone else DH when Matsui wasn’t playing. I think that’s the reason he is a 2.7 WAR player rather than a 2.2 WAR player that you would expect when you look at the numbers. Though I’m not sure this is the entire explanation.

Whatever the Nats do it should probably be done without Dunn. I like Dunn and all he has a great bat, but his horrid defense almost completely outweighs it. As so many of you have already pointed out, he needs to be a DH. To be the best you can be you have to be a well rounded team with pitching, hitting, and defense. The Nats have to give up some of their offense, and bring in a guy who can catch the ball at first.

Nice bat to have in the middle of the order and the idea of him improving his D at first isn’t exactly impossible. It would be a nice player for Washington to lock up and stabilize their offense long term.

Dunn is one of the worst fielders of the last 3 decades, and if you go back longer than that there was the DH and stiffs like Dunn who couldn’t play even average defense didn’t have a place in MLB. And that’s the way it should be.

We’ve reached a point where stats are almost over-analyzed to the point of absurdity.

People are talking like a player who put up a .900+ OPS season is almost worthless to an NL team. That is just ridiculous, in my mind.

Dunn is an offensive weapon. Yes, his defense is substandard, but as a 1B his liabilities are minimized. I don’t care if the Nats lock him up or not, but he definitely makes that offense significantly better.

I don’t think anyone’s saying Dunn’s worthless, but the value of his offense clearly plummets when he gives back so many runs defensively. Even if the impact of that defense is lessened by hiding him at first base, you still can’t ignore it.

Dunn as a DH and very occasional fielder has tremendous value. Adam Dunn as a combined hitter/fielder is merely above average.